Stanford Innovation & Inventions

Stanford’s Office of Technology Licensing (OTL) brings technology created at Stanford to market. In 2016–17 Stanford received $45.39 million in gross royalty revenue from 808 technologies. Fify-six of the inventions generated $100,000 or more in royalties. Five inventions generated $1 million or more. In 2016–17, OTL concluded 157 new licenses.

Among the Inventions Licensed by OTL:

Antibody therapies: In the 1980s, Leonard Herzenberg, Vernon Oi and Sherie Morrison invented a technique for producing functional antibodies, enabling treatments for such conditions as autoimmune diseases and cancer.

Bioplastics: Researchers in Craig Criddle’s laboratory have developed a method of producing bioplastics from municipal, agricultural and food waste materials.

Data analytics: Visutalization software created in 2001 in the laboratory of Patrick Hanrahan helps anyone working with large amounts of data to quickly analyze, visualize and share information.

Digital music: John Chowning developed FM sound synthesis for digitally generating sounds in the late 1960s, leading to the music synthesizer.

Disease management: The Stanford Patient Education Research Center creates programs for chronic health problems, including arthritis and HIV/AIDS, that have been licensed to more than 500 organizations in 17 countries.

DSL: In the 1980s, John Cioffi and his students discovered how to use traditional phone lines for high-speed data transmission, resulting in patents used in asymmetric digital subscriber lines.

Google: The world’s most popular search engine got its start at Stanford in 1996 when Sergey Brin and Larry Page developed the page-rank algorithm while computer science graduate students.

Optical fiber amplifier: This invention by John Shaw and Michel J.F. Digonnet enabled the bandwidth explosion in optical communications and telecommunications essential to the Internet.

Recombinant DNA: This ubiquitous tool for molecular biology was developed in 1973 by Stanley Cohen and Herbert Boyer to enable scientists to perform genetic engineering by combining pieces of DNA from different organisms, laying the groundwork for the biotechnology industry.

Refocus photography: Ren Ng, Patrick Hanrahan, Marc Levoy and Mark Horowitz invented a camera that captures an entire light field with an array of thousands of sensors. Photographers can use this camera to take interactive pictures that can be refocused after the fact.

Tuberculosis test: Gary Schoolnik and colleagues developed a diagnostic test for tuberculosis that can distinguish between patients who have been vaccinated and those who actually have the disease.

Wellspring of Innovation

A 2012 study estimated that companies formed by Stanford entrepreneurs generate world revenues of $2.7 trillion annually and have created 5.4 million jobs since the 1930s. Stanford alumni and faculty have created 39,900 companies since the 1930s, which, if gathered collectively into an independent nation, would constitute the world’s 10th largest economy. Frederick Terman, provost from 1955 to 1965, is called the “academic architect” of the high-technology region known as Silicon Valley.

Notable dates in computing:

1953

High-speed electronic calculator installed on campus

1956

First computer installed

1957

First faculty member specializing in computers hired

1965

Computer Science Department founded

1968

Computer mouse, hypertext linking debuted at Stanford

1987

First residential computing program established at Stanford

1988

Stanford’s network is one of the first to connect to the Internet

1991

SLAC creates the first U.S. website

2005

Stanford is the first university to launch a public site on iTunes U

2013

Stanford engineers build computer using carbon nanotubes

Some of the companies Stanford faculty and alumni have helped create:

Atheros Communications

Charles Schwab & Company

Cisco Systems

Cypress Semiconductor

Dolby Laboratories

eBay

E*Trade

Electronic Arts

Exponent

Gap

Goodreads

Google

Hewlett-Packard Company

IDEO

Instagram

Intuit

Intuitive Surgical

Kiva

LinkedIn

Logitech

MIPS Technologies

Netflix

Nike

NVIDIA

Odwalla

One Kings Lane

Orbitz

Rambus

Silicon Graphics

Stub Hub

Sun Microsystems

SunPower Corp.

Taiwan Semiconductor

Tesla Motors

Trader Joe’s

Varian

VMware

Whole Earth Catalog

Yahoo!

Zillow

Last updated 3 weeks ago

STANFORD INNOVATION

Google's original server – encased in Lego blocks, translucent plastic and packaging tape – is on display at the Huang Engineering Center.